Poll: Desktop environments

[zen_monkey]

Openbox! i've been using it since before the DE's revolution (gnome-shell, unity, and such) and altough i'm still in the works of having some stuff working (a bit lazy... ), some windows just won't respond to "unlock" buttons or stuff like that, i love it's simplicity.

I have Gnome-shrek installed and also cinnamon for either when someone else borrows my laptop or something doesn't work. Cinnamon looks nice but still fails to me on the wireless networks menu and turning the card on and off (maybe just a driver thing, BCM4322), i'll be looking for updates on it but in the mean time i can just congrat it's team for the work done and hope the good things keep coming.


Cheers!

[scharkalvin]

I am using Gnome2 on Mint9, but hope to upgrade soon to KDE on Mint13.
Laptop was using Mint13-XFCE, but I'm now trying out KDE. If my laptop (dual core2dual at 1.8ghz and 1gb ram ... thinkpad R60) can hack KDE I may switch to that. Might need to upgrade the ram to 2-4gb (cheap enough), otherwise I may go back to XFCE or try out Cinnamon.

[jlane01]

I like the cinnamon desktop, but am using KDE 4.9.0 right now. I'll probably try and stay with this for a while.

[baptiste]

Openbox! i've been using it since before the DE's revolution (gnome-shell, unity, and such) and altough i'm still in the works of having some stuff working (a bit lazy... ), some windows just won't respond to "unlock" buttons or stuff like that, i love it's simplicity.

I have Gnome-shrek installed and also cinnamon for either when someone else borrows my laptop or something doesn't work. Cinnamon looks nice but still fails to me on the wireless networks menu and turning the card on and off (maybe just a driver thing, BCM4322), i'll be looking for updates on it but in the mean time i can just congrat it's team for the work done and hope the good things keep coming.


Cheers!

you can always try to remove the network manager (apt-get remove network-manager, or is called gnome-network-manager) and try to use wicd instead.
though the solution would be a better driver hopefully available in a future release

[igor83]

I'm a Linux Mint fan and like to follow the news about it, but don't use it because I can't. I tried many times, with many distros (not just LM), but you know the story between ATI (and to a lesser extent Via) and linux. Ran into too many difficulties during install, not limited to crashes but also having to do with silent non-functioning Realtek sound and sluggish flash in Firefox, little hardware issues that are a big deal for me, and I don't know any gurus that could wave a magic wand and fix everything. I run Windows XP and it works great, and I'm sticking with it as long as I possibly can, but I think in the future I want to transition to LM on at least one of my rigs, possibly the htpc, if I can ever acquire a fully (and easily) compatible motherboard that's a no-brainer for installing Linux.

I think that Windows is all wrong because they emphasize big and faster systems, but actually the trend is to downsize and consume less power and generate less heat. Most people want HTPC, that is the wave of the future, and the ability to play video files of all kinds is essential. While OpenElec does offer a great distro for AMD/ATI, including one specifically for the AMD Fusion family, it is rather limited compared to Linux Mint and would definitely be an appliance computer rather than a jack of all trades. I prefer more flexibility in an htpc, being able to load a lot of different applications and not being limited just to watching shows. So I think eventually Linux Mint may attract more of the green, low-power htpc crowd, particularly as XP shows its age more and more with each passing year. Sooner or later new Windows apps are going to drop support of XP.

I also like Linux Mint for aesthetic reasons as I think it is just nicer to look at, and I like the green on the web site as well.

[herbie643]

I use Mate and love it. I tried Cinnamon but found, not to be rude, disjointed. Go here for this setting, go there for another. No centralization. When you right-click on the desktop and choose Change Background, that's it. Nothing else, UNLESS you go for All Settings (I think). But if you click on the taskbar Settings they are something else. Then you have to take into account the 'Shell' which I would equate to 'Controls' from the Gnome 2 theme management. Then go someplace else for icons. Sheesh. Mate is sooo simple to use. Of course I am old Gnome 2 user so I guess you could say I am biased, perhaps in a big way.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth.

[eren]

Mate

[mysoomro]

KDE is my favorite Desktop Environment.
When I started using mint; Katya was the release that I got. I installed GNOME in it. Didn't like it much, so changed to KDE. But It used to freeze a lot. Somehow managed to go on.
Life became a lot easier with Lisa KDE. It was really great. Used it for a long time. And there were almost no freeze or speed issues..
When Maya came, I couldn't control myself. And got an image for Maya Cinnamon. It seemed to be good, but some friend on Xchat IRC said i should try xfce and it is better than Cinnamon. But I didn't installed either of those; I got KDE again. But unfortunately it was too damn slow.. It was so irritating.. So switched to XFCE.
Well! it's good. Fast and elegant..
But I like KDE..

[linuxdude2]

Can somebody tell me if there are application compatibility problems in Cinnamon compared to MATE?

[lendote]

Hi,
Experience distro like openSuse 12.1, Fedora 16, MageIA 2 and ubuntu 12.04, I now discovering Linux Mint with MATE DE.
Concerning Cinnamon .. in a near futur, dual booting on my ACER 5552G.

[teatime]

New user - Cinnamon and I like it - thank you!

[dorrellkc]

kde is for sure my favorite.

[Mushorwell]

My gnome 3, cinnamon and KDE get extremely sluggish when my computer is not connected to a network/internet. I do not understand what the cause of this could be, is it possible that simply being connected to a network can enhance the performance of these DE's or could this issue be something more to do with the graphics driver I use, or maybe ultimately there is something very wrong with my linux mint setup (ie. might have to fresh install and start over to fix this)? For the mean-time I have managed to set up a good AwesomeWM session for fallback purposes and when I am not connected to a network.
Has anyone encountered a similar problem?

[baptiste]

maybe the network card driver is crazy.
doing some pointless thing all over again and again.
if you run "top" in a terminal, can you see an offending process using 100% of a core?
does disabling in BIOS, or removing the network card/interface/stick, "solve" the problem?

if not, this is deep.
a reason for your computer working with awesome may be, if no network manager is launched, then none of the crazyness happens.
you may try disabling the networking manager in gnome/KDE, preventing it from being launched or even removing try ; try to use wicd instead.

when I install a desktop that only gets network from cabled internet, I get rid of the network manager and use a simple /etc/network/interfaces file. old text and CLI but that gives me one less thing to worry about.

btw, I awesome is a good choice for tiling manager I'll have to try it . there are so many ones. I may judge it given the names, most are non-descriptive but there's "awesome" and "ratpoison", surely the former will be easier than the latter

[Flemur]

Can somebody tell me if there are application compatibility problems in Cinnamon compared to MATE?

No problems here w/Cinnamon except for the "Panel Launcher", which randomly removes or changes launchers and became invisible (can't access it to add items) when it was empty. FWIW.

[tarkus]

MATE totally rocks!!! I've been a long time Gnome user, but really hated what they did with Gnome 3. Just started running MATE with Mint 13, and it's true Gnome, just like it should be.

[toope]

MATE totally rocks!!! I've been a long time Gnome user, but really hated what they did with Gnome 3. Just started running MATE with Mint 13, and it's true Gnome, just like it should be.

I 2nd this - MATE made my day

[Asimov]

Enlightenement, because it's the most flexible. I try KDE, but the pager is broken. I try openbox, but it keep crashing. The standard menu on Gnome is OK, but for non anglophone the iconic menu in the background is unusable because of the limitation of 12 character at the bottom of the icon. I have 12 icons with the word "Gestionnaire" because for langage like French or Italian the order of the expression are different. In French, Italian the expression "display manager" would become something like"manager of display".

[Wolfen69]

I'm using lxde right now, but who knows how long that will last. I get bored every few months and use something else. All DE's are good to me, and it really doesn't matter what I use.

[Lord High Warlock]

I'm in the 11%...KDE for me!